Designing for an Innovative Learning Organization

System architects rely on their intuition when designing a system to support the work within an organization. Programming tradition leads the system architect to think of an office as a factory, a kind of machine. Machines are complicated, but not complex. An organization, a marketplace, and an ecosystem are not like machines. This paper suggests that a better understanding of the nature of an organization is necessary to design systems that allow a learning organization to excel. In order for an innovative organization to continually reinvent itself, the members need to be free to try new things. This individual experimentation is at odds with a system that constrains action to predefined patterns. Organizations are complex, and display antifragile qualities. Like other adaptive systems, organizations need a bit of change and stress in order to remain healthy. As more organizations become agile, system architects need to understand their needs and to know how to use a new generation of tools, such as adaptive case management, that support innovation and learning organizations.